Mastery” is an inappropriate image for depicting epistemological success; knowledge is an exercise not of power but of virtue.

Modernity has hitched its wagon to science, a form of discourse that challenges and undermines traditional narratives. But in order to legitimize itself, science needs a story of progress from opinion and superstition to scientific truth and on to universal peace and happiness. The Enlightenment project is inseparable from its legitimizing metanarratives.

Christian thinkers, like everyone else, must accept their situatedness in language (i.e., history, culture, tradition). But they must also dispute the implication that such situatedness justifies either irresponsible play or joyless despair, for the story of language ends not with Babel but with Pentecost. Pentecost is especially important for understanding catholicity: the Spirit did not create church unity by creating a common tongue but ministered the Word of God to the assembled crowd in such a way that each person heard it in his or her own native language (Acts 2:8). Apparently there is not one language of heaven but many.

rationality has less to do with following scholarly procedures and more to do with becoming a saint.

The report seems, more (than) anything else, to be an elaborate justification of extending the occupation of Iraq.

Slavery is stupid